Ancient Kedah

Ancient Kedah
Settlement in Kedah goes back to the Stone Age; some of the earliest excavated archaeological sites in the country are found near Gunung Jerai.

According to history there was a suggestion that Kedah name originated from the word Kataha or Kadaram or Kidaram which was apparently known in Southern India.

This happened during Chola monarch, Rajendra Chola (AD 1012-1052), dispatched several expeditions over the water to the East probably in defense of Tamil or Telegu settlements on the east coast of Sumatra and on the west coast of southernmost Burma, the isthmus of Kra and Malaya.

At that time the ships and merchants patronized Kedah due its strategic location facing the Bay of Bengal and also its natural safe anchorages. Kedah had emerged as an entrepot which witnessed the sale and purchase of merchandise, the layover of traders waiting for favorable winds before voyaging further and the establishment of store houses.

Kedah was known to Chinese as Chiecha. According to them, it was an important port in the 3rd century AD; it had a safe and excellent harbor at the mouth of the river Merbau.

The findings in Lembah Bujang date back to the Hindu-Buddhist period in the 4th century AD, and the current royal family can trace its line back directly to this time.

During the 7th an 8th centuries, Kedah paid tribute to the Srivijaya Empire of Sumatra, but later fell under the influence of the Siamese until the 15th century, when the rise of Melaka led to the Islamisation of the area.

According to Tome Pires (who spent time from 1512 to 1515 in Peninsular):
“Kedah is a very small kingdom, with few people and few houses. It is up a river. There is pepper there, a matter of four hundreds bahars a year. This pepper goes by way of Siam to China, with that which they bring from Pase and Pedir also. When any ship comes to Tenasserim and to the ports of Siam, it comes to Kedah to sell its merchandise also and the people from the tin districts buy and take good, because Kedah is trading country and they get to the land of Siam in three or four days by land, they take the merchandise from Kedah to Siam.”

In the 17th century Kedah was attacked by the Portuguese who had already conquered Malacca and by the Acehnese, who saw Kedah as a threat to their own spice production.
Ancient Kedah